history. It was an out- standing feature of the old Grand Duchy of Moscow-pious, xeno- phobic, eternally sus- picious of the heretical foreIgner. Two hun- dred years of P eters- burg rule broke down this estrangement only in part, and primarily among the educated classes: the nobility, the gentry, commer- cial circles, and the liberal intelligentsia. And then the Russian Revolution, occurring in all the agony of the First World War, and marked, as it was, by the return of the capi- tal to Moscow and the political destruction or elimination of pre- cisely the more cos- mopolitan elements of the population, inten- sified the estrangement enormously, substitut- ing a militant ideo- logical antagonism for the onetime religious abhorrence of the West, and discovering a new form of dangerous heresy in the Marxist vision of capitalism. This militancy, to be sure, soon began to fade under the im- pact with reality; but the rhetoric, in itself an impediment to normal re- lations, remained. And the years of Stalinist horror were no help. This fearsome Stalinist despotism, a gro- tesque anomaly in the modern world, could no more stand free association with the Western countries than could the court of old Muscovy in the days of I van the Terrible. And the traces of Stalinism, while today much faded and partly obliterated, are stil1 not wholly absent from the Soviet scene. All in all, then, the Soviet regime never was, and is not today, one with which the United States could expect to have anything other than a complex and often difficult relationship. It is a regime marked by a relatively high sense of insecurity. It has a tendency to overdo in the cultivation of military strength. It is unduly sensitive to the slightest influence or involvement of outside powers in regions just beyond its lengthy borders. It has a neurotic passion for secrecy and, as a product of that passion, a positive obsession with espionage, both offensive and defen- ,Ef! 7' (?Ý ;, 45 . ..... ...- .... ...-. , . . : '. . . 11- _4.. .. \ I I. " ',," ....... {J' G \\ I , -" f. . x ..... ........ .'$- (I , ,^ ,,,t "During the next commercial, I'm going to belt you one!" . sive-an obsession that has inter- fered with its relations with the West, and has even damaged the regime's own interests, more often and more seriously, than the regime has until lately brought itself to recognize. The penetration by a Soviet submarine into sensitive Swedish waters and the re- cent shooting down of the Korean air- liner are striking examples of the over- indulgence in this obsession; and one hopes that the Soviet leaders will learn from the world reaction to these events what harm they do themselves when they let military considerations ride roug hshod over wider interests. To continue with this listing of the negative factors: Soviet negotiating techniques often appear, 'particularly to those not familiar with them, to be stiff, awkward, secretive, and unpre- dictable. Above all, they are lacking in the useful lubrication that comes from informal personal association and ex- changes among negotiators. And there are, too, specific Soviet policies that grate severely on Western sensibilities. The Soviet leaders do indeed make efforts to gain influence and authority among the regimes and peoples of the Third World. While the methods they employ do not seem to differ . greatly from those of other major powers, including us, and while their efforts in this direction have not met, generally speaking, with any very alarming measure of success, these practices naturally arouse concern and resentment in large sections of our official community. And then, of course, there is the fact that the Soviet leaders insist on maintaining a monop- oly of political power in their own country and proceed harshly against those who appear to challenge or threaten that monopoly; and, beyond that, they unquestionably use their military hegemony to support and to maintain in power in Eastern Europe, insofar as it is possible, regimes simi- larly inspired and similarly resistant to liberalizing tendencies. All this is ob- viously a constant thorn in the flesh of much Western opinion. And, finally, there is the phenome- non, familiar to all foreign representa- tives and observers in Russia, of the curious dual personality that the Soviet regime presents to the resident for- eigner: the façade that is composed of people-often amiable and charming people-authorized to associate and communicate with the outside world; and, behind that façade, never visible